March of time tramples a decent political satire

By BILL VIRGIN, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Updated 10:00 pm, Monday, October 21, 2002

Political and cultural satire has a shelf life shorter than bread in a grocery store.

Most of the jokes on Vaughn Meader's comedy album about the Kennedy administration would be met with blank stares now. David Frye was a big deal with his impressions of Richard Nixon; there's not much call for that these days. And today's audiences would have a hard time explaining why the references to Gen. Franco on "Saturday Night Live" became a catch phrase of the time.

Round-the-clock news reports and an infinite variety of information sources on the Web and cable TV have shortened even further the time it takes for a current events-based book, movie or comedy album to reach its pull date for staleness.

Such is the problem with Christopher Buckley's latest novel, "No Way To Treat a First Lady."

Buckley's book uses as a plot point of departure an incident from the tempestuous occupation of the White House by Bill and Hillary Clinton. During one "discussion" of the state of their union, so widespread gossip went, Hillary chucked a lamp at her hubby.

What if, asks the book as its premise, Hillary hadn't missed?

In this case, the First Lady in question is Beth MacMann, married to a war hero/philanderer of a president. One night, in the midst of one more verbal altercation over one more infidelity, she hurls a Paul Revere spittoon at him -- and connects. Next morning, she wakes up; he doesn't. Now the former First Lady is facing a charge of assassination.

Her only hope is to turn to her college boyfriend, who she dumped for the future president. He's now a high-profile criminal defense attorney whose motto is "the truth has no place in a court of law."

Into this stew, Buckley dumps all sorts of not-so-veiled references to political, media and entertainment-world figures, characters from his previous books, even an inside reference to one of his own battles ("No Way" mentions in passing the launching of a new navy vessel, the USS Tom Clancy; Buckley once called Clancy the most successful bad writer of his generation, prompting a splenetic response from Clancy).

It's not that this is bad stuff. Buckley is a talented satire writer, as demonstrated in his collection of magazine pieces "Wry Martinis" and novels such as "Thank You for Smoking."

But it is dated. Maritally wayward presidents? Media-hyped circuslike celebrity trials? This isn't last year's news, it's last decade's news.

Such are the hazards of trying satire in book form -- with its long lead time -- particularly when the frivolities of the 1990s have been overtaken by much more serious and dreadful events. A clue to the book's basic problem can be found in the author's afterword/acknowledgements. It is dated Sept. 9 . . . 2001.